This piece of sculpture by Naum Gabo is a model for a larger piece he completed in 1923 called Column. Over the next two years, while living and working in the turbulent environment of post-Revolutionary Moscow, Gabo began to fall out with other artists, in a pattern that would become familiar. Gabo found his time in Cornwall emotionally challenging, and he experienced severe creative block, potentially a psychological effect of the war: he was following developments in Europe with great anxiety, worried for his family, with whom he had all but lost touch. Since the 1950s, Gabo had been reworking many of his sculptural designs as public installations - including a 25-metre sculpture for the Bijenkorf Department Store in Rotterdam, completed in 1957 - and this activity gathered pace towards the end of his life. As a Russian, he was under constant suspicion, and had to report regularly to the police until 1941, when Britain and Russia became uneasy allies. But when set in motion by an electric motor, the oscillations of the rod generate a delicately complex image of a freestanding, twisting wave. The work is composed of six meditations, in which Descartes attempts to establish a firm "Sculpture: Carving and construction in space,", The Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller Empire State Plaza Art Collection, Mr and Mrs Frank G. Logan Art Institute Prize. Boris Pevsner owned a successful metal works and rolling mill, which supplied many of the railways around Russia. Gabo chose to look past all that was dark in his life, creating sculptures that though fragile are balanced so as to give us a sense of the constructions delicately holding turmoil at bay. Gabo had also begun after his arrival in England to experiment with new materials such as Perspex and stone, influenced by the Direct Carving of Moore and Hepworth, though materials were increasingly hard to source, and sales were poor. See the renowned permanent collection and special exhibitions. Naum Gabo's structurally complex, mesmeric abstract sculptures cast a shadow over the whole of 20th-century art, while his life was that of the quintessential creative migr, as he moved from country to country seeking new contexts for his work, in flight from war and repression. Presented by the artist 1977 Away from war-torn Europe, Gabo found artistic freedom and financial security. At the outbreak of World War II he followed his friends Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson to St Ives in Cornwall, where he stayed initially with the art critic Adrian Stokes and his wife Margaret Mellis. The dynamic arrangement of string-work and Perspex creates three-dimensional light patterns which transform as the viewer moves around the object. Kinetic Stone Carving is one of Gabo's more anomalous and beautiful works, which would probably not have been created without the creative stimulus of his friendship with British abstract sculptors such as Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth during the late 1930s and 1940s. 2 is a figurative bust, one of four similar works that characterize Gabo's early career, created during his period of refuge in Norway during World War One. To escape the rise of the Nazis in Germany the pair stayed in Paris in 193235 as members of the Abstraction-Creation group with Piet Mondrian. "Inspiration: a functional approach to creative practice", "V&A conservators race to preserve art and design classics in plastic", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Naum_Gabo&oldid=1133235691, Honorary Knights Commander of the Order of the British Empire, Members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Short description is different from Wikidata, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 12 January 2023, at 20:48. A third, Natan (later Antoine), four years older than Naum, became a successful artist, and was a significant influence on his younger brother, whose artistic curiosity was beginning to emerge through a love of poetry and early attempts at sculpture, informed by the Tsarist art that dominated his cultural landscape. For Gabo, sculptures like Column, which gave a certain impression of weightlessness, "appeal[ed] to minds and feelings more than crude physical senses". Pencil and india ink on paper - Shchusev State Museum of Architecture, Moscow. 2 2022-10-21. By Naum Gabo (Author), Christina Lodder (Editor), Martin Hammer (Editor), By Martin Hammer, Naum Gabo, Christina Lodder, By Naum Gabo, Steven A. Nash, Jrn Merkert, Colin C. Sanderson, By Anne Cleveland / The birth of a daughter, Nina Serafima, in 1941, also brought him out of a period of creative torpor. Gabo was a fluent speaker and writer in German, French, and English in addition to his native Russian. His influence was important to the development of modernism within St Ives, and it can be seen most conspicuously in the paintings and constructions of John Wells and Peter Lanyon, both of whom developed a softer more pastoral form of Constructivism. This is a part of the Wikipedia article used under the Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0 Unported License (CC-BY-SA). 2022-10-21. Norway was quiet and tranquil. In generating the impression of volume in empty space, Gabo was responding to contemporary scientific theories stressing the "disintegration between solids and surrounding space". The couple remained together for the remainder of Gabo's life, ironically supporting themselves initially with money from Miriam's ex-husband, as well as funds from occasional sales of Gabo's work. It is abstract, geometric, and created with industrial design methods. Artwork page for Spiral Theme, Naum Gabo, 1941 When Spiral Theme was shown in wartime London, it was greeted with popular acclaim. Jrn Merkert, Berlin: Berlinische Galerie, 1989, 158 pp. He made the first of a series of small, three-dimensional models, using glass, metal and new plastics the following year but owing to the size and nature of the work, and the unstable nature of new plastics, he was unable to Spiral Theme also helped to ensure Gabo's reputation within Britain. Finished in St. Ives, it is one of a number of stone works from this period which represent Gabo's first experiments with the time-honored technique of direct carving. Gabo held a utopian belief in the power of sculpturespecifically abstract, Constructivist sculptureto express human experience and spirituality in tune with modernity, social progress, and advances in science and technology. Expressing a new, intellectually scrupulous approach to the fascination with movement which characterized avant-garde art of this period, Gabo created a work which stands at the forefront of Kinetic Art. Showing his openness to new techniques and influences, Gabo inscribed dynamic rhythms into the surfaces of stone - his new-found fascination with this material would occupy him until his death. Intended to demonstrate ideas from modern geometry and physics, Gabo's use of space within sculpture stands alongside Stphane Mallarm's incorporation of page-space into poetry, and John Cage's incorporation of silence into music, in epitomizing a modern, secular concern with expressing what is unknown as well as what is known: with void as well as form. This is a relatively simple construction by Gabo's standards, consisting of a plain steel rod affixed to a wooden base. Like all the most important artists, his work and his life were fundamentally shaped by the era in which he lived, and helped to define that era in turn. Metal, wood and electric motor - Collection of the Tate, United Kingdom. They resumed late-night conversations begun in Paris earlier in the decade, on Constructivism, Neo-Plasticism, and the illusionistic space of the painting. As a young man in post-Revolutionary Russia, Gabo was closely associated with Constructivism, He was part of the St Ives group in Cornwall, alongside Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson. Naum gabo artwork. [1] These include Constructie, a 25-metre (82ft) commemorative monument in front of the Bijenkorf Department Store (1954, unveiled in 1957) in Rotterdam, and Revolving Torsion, a large fountain outside St Thomas' Hospital in London. In the calmness at the still centre of even his smallest works, we sense the vastness of space, the enormity of his conception, time as continuous growth." During this period the reliefs and construction became more geometric and Gabo began to experiment with kinetic sculpture though the majority of the work was lost or destroyed. Model for 'Column' was created in 1921 by Naum Gabo in Constructivism style. Exh: Gabo elaborated many of his ideas in the Constructivist Realistic Manifesto, which he issued with his brother, sculptor Antoine Pevsner as a handbill accompanying their 1920 open-air exhibition in Moscow. Naum Gabo, Annely Juda Fine Art, London, 1999. At the same time, he was working on a series of increasingly abstract sculptural constructions. Gabo and Pevsner promoted the manifesto by staging an exhibition on a bandstand on Tverskoy Boulevard in Moscow and posted the manifesto on hoardings around the city. Lit: His first print was a wood engraving in a section of wood taken from a piece of furniture and printed onto a piece of toilet paper. A larger version was created for the exhibition New Movements in Art: Contemporary Work in England, held at the London Museum in Spring 1942. Model for 'Torsion', however, was eventually translated into a large fountain outside St Thomas' Hospital in London. It was in his sculpture that he evaded all the chaos, violence, and despair he had survived. See the renowned permanent collection and special exhibitions. [Internet]. He clashed with El Lissitzky, for example, over an article by Lissitsky which Gabo claimed had plagiarized concepts from Realistic Manifesto, speaking of a "dry and bitter spirit of hostility between them". The abstract compositional vocabulary of works like Column was not abstract for the sake of it, but was intended as a means of defining the new ways in which Soviet citizens might feel, perceive, and act within the world around them. Wassily Kandinsky's revelatory book on abstract art, Concerning the Spiritual in Art (1912), was gaining currency at this time, and fomented Gabo's interest in representing the structures and forces of nature. Naum Gabo, KBE born Naum Neemia Pevsner, was an influential sculptor, theorist, and key figure in Russia's post-Revolution avant-garde and the subsequent development of twentieth-century sculpture. Because of his involvement in these intellectual debates, Gabo became a leading figure in Moscows avant garde, in post-Revolution Russia. An illusion of movement is created as the smooth, wave-like shapes seem to advance and recede. Gabo's engineering training was key to the development of his sculptural work that often used machined elements. Hammer, Martin and Naum Gabo, Christina Lodder. At the same time, Gabo's interest in transparent materials like glass and plastic - which was profound and enduring from this period onwards - reflected his ongoing fascination with depicting volume independently of mass. They were often projects for monumental public schemes, rarely achieved, in which sculpture and architecture came together. In a country starved of resources, Gabo had to rely on a friend who worked for Imperial Chemicals to provide these materials. Nature / In 1912 Gabo transferred to an engineering school in Munich where he discovered abstract art and met Wassily Kandinsky and in 1913-14 joined his brother Antoine (who by then was an established painter) in Paris. The model, like the later piece, is made of glass, plastic, and metal. The Tate Gallery, London held a major retrospective of Gabo's work in 1966 and holds many key works in its collection, as do the Museum of Modern Art and Guggenheim Museum in New York. To find any part of machinery was next to impossible". Gabo had no formal artistic training. Linear Construction in Space No. base: 0.3 cm (1/8 in.) Due to the dearth of exhibitions and sales in war-time Britain, Gabo's time in England was not commercially successful, though he always looked back on it fondly. He made the first of a series of small, three-dimensional models, using glass, metal and new plastics the following year but owing to the size and nature of the work, and the unstable nature of new plastics, he was unable to By the early 1930s, the political climate in Germany had grown increasingly nationalistic, anti-semitic, and toxic. He would later remark that "if anyone made me a Jew, it was Hitler". They were often projects for monumental public schemes, rarely achieved, in which sculpture and architecture came together. All Rights Reserved, Gabo on Gabo: Texts and Interviews Paperback - April, 2002, Constructing Modernity: The Art & Career of Naum Gabo, Naum Gabo: The constructive idea; sculpture, drawings, paintings, monoprint, 'Absolute' Art Discussed Here by Naum Gabo, Naum Gabo and the Quandaries of the Replica, TateShots: Interview with the artist Naum Gabo's daughter, Naum Gabo & Antoine Pevsner - The Realistic Manifesto (Manifesto Extract, 1920), Transcript of interview of Naum Gabo by Gunnar Jespersen, Gabo believed that art should have an explicit and functional value in society. It was in Munich that Gabo attended the lectures of art historian Heinrich Wlfflin and gained knowledge of the ideas of Einstein and his fellow innovators of scientific theory, as well as the philosopher Henri Bergson. He famously explored the former idea in his Linear Construction works (1942-1971)used nylon filament to create voids or interior spaces as "concrete" as the elements of solid massand the latter in his pioneering work, Kinetic Sculpture (Standing Waves) (1920), often considered the first kinetic work of art. My works of this time, up to 1924 , are all in the search for an image which would fuse the sculptural element with the architectural element into one unit. October 30, 1997, By Christina Lodder / Artist: Naum Gabo, American, born Russia, 18901977 Model of the Column (formerly Model for Glass Fountain) ca. Constructed Head No. Gabo's increasing concern, from the late 1930s, with the aesthetic aspect of his work at the expense of the industrial can be seen in Model for 'Construction in Space "Crystal"'. The piece now at Yale was bought by the Socit Anonyme from the artist c.1927-9. They were often projects for monumental public schemes, rarely achieved, in which sculpture and architecture came together. Naum Gabo Model for Column 19201 The Work of Naum Gabo Nina & Graham Williams / Tate, London 2023 License this image Not on display Artist Naum Gabo 18901977 Medium Plastic (cellulose nitrate) Dimensions Object: 143 95 95 mm Collection Tate Acquisition Presented by the artist 1977 Reference T02167 Display caption Catalogue entry Gabo elaborated many of his ideas in the Constructivist Realistic Manifesto, which he issued with his brother, sculptor Antoine Pevsner as a handbill accompanying their 1920 open-air exhibition in Moscow. Gabo would go on to exhibit regularly with the revolutionary Novembergruppe artists - named after the month in 1918 when Germany's own socialist uprising had begun - and to make links with artists such as Hans Richter and Kurt Schwitters. Model for 'Column' was created in 1921 by Naum Gabo in Constructivism style. (German) Naum Gabo, 1890-1977, Annely Juda Fine Art, London, 1990. See the renowned permanent collection and special exhibitions. From an early age, Naum was strong-minded, rebellious, and politically driven. Naum Gabo Model for Column 19201 The Work of Naum Gabo Nina & Graham Williams / Tate, London 2023 License this image Not on display Artist Naum Gabo 18901977 Medium Plastic (cellulose nitrate) Dimensions Object: 143 95 95 mm Collection Tate Acquisition Presented by the artist 1977 Reference T02167 Display caption Catalogue entry Key to this work, considered by many critics to be amongst Gabo's finest, are the harmonious, organic rhythms generated by the interplay of curved lines, and the complex patterns of reflected light which shift and reconfigure as the viewer moves around the sculpture. Gabo's formative years were in Munich, where he was inspired by and actively participated in the artistic, scientific, and philosophical debates of the early years of the 20th century. Gabos acute awareness of turmoil sought out solace in the peacefulness that was so fully realized in his ideal art forms. At the same time, it is perhaps the most literal of Gabo's Kinetic sculptures - he called it more of an "explanation of the idea than a Kinetic sculpture itself" - and he progressed from here to works that suggested rather than embodied movement, through their dynamic arrangement of form and space. Nonetheless, in 1946, he and his new family finally made the long-awaited move to the USA, mainly on the promise of finding a more lucrative market for Gabo's work. Constructed Head No. Perspex, wood, metal, and glass - The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, New York. His tour was aborted early due to lack of funds and apparent feelings of loneliness. Gabo sent a maquette to London, where Reid located a sponsor to fund the construction of the final piece and find a suitable location. 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